Birthday Haul #3: Cartoon Modern Book
A wad of extra birthday cash inspired me to go to amazon.com and purchase the book Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in Fifties Animation written by Amid Amidi of Cartoon Brew and Animation Blast magazine. Although I haven’t yet read it, the book looks absolutely gorgeous and smartly designed with tons of beautiful film stills and production art. I also like how it was organized alphabetically by studio, encompassing not just theatrically released shorts but television (dig the early, cooler lookin’ Flintstones!), commercials and industrial films. There’s also an intruiging section on animation trends in Europe. I could be completely wrong about this — but paging through the book gives one the sense that during this period the big movies studios’ animation units were becoming obsolete, which paved the way for dozens of smaller studios to step in and produce more visually innovative work. I can’t wait to read this one.
